The squircles of bat-worker hell

Regular readers of the revelations I occasionally reveal here will know that bat-work (and especially professional bat-work) is governed by a capricious, malicious, devious and mischievous bunch of bat-gods, who derive much pleasure from toying with us, like a cat toys with an unfortunate mouse (Ignore the gods of bat-work at your peril).

You may also have heard that, when a bat-worker snuffs it we may hope to be swept up by a scruffy-pipistrelle-standing-in-for-a-valkyrie and taken to the bat version of Valhalla, where the gods of bat-work will do their dodgy best to emulate the feastings halls of Norse heroes (Further news from the gods of bat-work). 

But what happens to bat-workers who fall under a bus, but have angered or disappointed the gods of bat-work, preventing entry to the chiropteran Valhalla? What happens to those who have not kept up their Bat Conservation Trust subscription or even - I hardly dare say it - never joined at all? If the bat-gods ever heard you use terrible utterances such as "It's only a common pip" or criticise the level of bat activity on your survey, then bat-worker Valhalla is not where you'll be going, my friend.

A gratuitous Noctule!

There is a deep, dark and terrible place where the gods of bat-work send expired bat-workers whom they consider deserving of terrible vengeance and suffering. In homage to the vision of hell in Dante's "Inferno" they have created five squircles of hell for you to suffer in. They should, of course be circles, but have you ever tried to draw a circle with just a wing to hold the pencil? Also, Dante's vision had nine circles, but like all aspects of wildlife conservation, the bat-gods are working to a tight budget. 

The first squircle of bat-worker hell seems innocuous enough. You'll be ushered to a comfortable, ergonomic swivel-chair before an enormous desk. When you open the top-end lap-top upon it your favourite bat call analysis software will be loaded, ready for you. But when you analyse the calls you find they are all Pipistrelles with a peak frequency of 50kHz, or Myotis calls with those subtle characteristics nicely jumbled (as they so often are in real life). In fact, every call you look at will be cryptic or confusing and, when you open the desk drawer in search of helpful books by Messrs. Russ or Middleton you will find nothing. And then you'll discover there's a deadline...

In the second squircle of bat-worker hell you will also have a nice lap-top and a mobile phone too. You will soon receive emails and phone calls from lots of cheerful people, all of whom really want to commission you to survey their enticingly interesting property. "This can't be bat-worker hell", you think. "I must have been sent to the wrong place, by mistake". But then they all say variants of the same fatal phrase "I've looked in the attic and there aren't any bats". Your heart sinks, as you realise you are doomed to listen to that phrase, as though on a tape-loop, for all of eternity...

At first the third squircle of bat-worker hell seems like you are participating in a normal sunset bat emergence survey and perhaps you begin to relax, thinking the worst is over. Then you hear them approaching and in a few moments the first of an ever-growing phalanx of grubby, snotty children arrive on a fleet of bicycles, scooters, skateboards and go-karts, all of them gathering around you. "Whatya doin?" "Whassat?" "Will bats eat my gran's cat?" "Do bats fart?" At first you try to answer their questions, but gradually the cacophony grows, you realise none of them are listening to you and as their numbers swell you feel yourself sinking to the bottom of a sea of inane chatter.

In the fourth squircle of bat-worker hell you find yourself strapped to a chair and forced to read a continuous flow of truly awful bat survey reports. You're subjected to a never-ending stream of Swallow droppings interpreted as bat roosts, barking mad conclusions drawn from minimal evidence, field mouse slaughter sites labelled as BLE feeding perches, site plans with inadequate surveyor positions, out-dated equipment used with pride, pointless job-creation sunset surveys of negligible suitability buildings, recommendations of illegal actions and so on, ad infinitum. When you feel you can take no more and begin to say "wibble" repeatedly, they bring out their pièce de résistance: a letter from a pest controller, explaining that he sat in the attic for half an hour and didn't see any bats.

The fifth squircle is where you realise you have definitely landed in hell and it is as bad as you might imagine. It is night and you are walking through the countryside, holding the bat detector of your dreams, but no sound comes from it. You walk for miles, but the detector remains silent. This is when you realise you are in a vision of the future. There are no bats - excessive use of pesticides, habitat loss, poor conservation funding and short-sighted policies have rendered them all extinct. And you're condemned to walk this bat-less land for eternity.

You should've paid your BCT sub, shouldn't you? 

BCT membership page

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Further news from the gods of bat-work

I recently wrote about the gods of bat-work - small, mischievous god-lets, who entertain themselves by making our lives complicated (Ignore the gods of bat-work at your peril). So many people seemed to enjoy discovering the truth behind those niggles and problems in their professional lives that I thought I'd tell you a little more about them.

Have you ever wondered what happens to a bat ecologist who shrugs off their mortal coil? As with all things, the gods of bat-work have a part to play in this, and it may surprise you to hear that there are close parallels with the Norse world. When a viking warrior died in battle, a beautiful, shining winged valkyrie would bear him off to Valhalla, the feasting-hall of the Norse gods. In our case, it's more likely to be a couple of tatty Pipistrelles who owe you a favour, but it's the thought that counts.

On arriving at the chiropteran feasting-hall, one or two differences between it and Valhalla may become apparent. Like the vikings, we will spend the rest of our days feasting with the gods, but we'll do it in a more appropriate manner. The vikings would sit at their feasting-benches, imbibing great foaming tankards of ale and goblets of mead, whereas for us of course it will be luke-warm cups of Costa coffee and out-of-date cans of Red Bull. You see, the gods of bat-work would like us to feel at home after we switch off our detector for the last time.

Not for us the roasted sucking-pig or great sides of beef, whilst talking of battles and wars - that would be simply wrong. Until the end of days we shall feast on service-station sandwiches, tupperware boxes of left-overs and many strange Ginsters products, whilst arguing yet again about whether that bat three years ago really was a Barbastelle...

There will also be some strange burgers made of compressed midges and there'll be meal-worms, served squeezed-out or not, according to taste. After all, this is the feasting-hall of the bat-gods, and their delicacies can't possibly taste worse than our filling-station menu, can they?

But who will serve this largesse to us? For the vikings, that was easy. If they didn't have enough serving-wenches, they could simply capture some more on the next raid. Clearly, for us, in the 2020s that is not appropriate, especially as professional ecology has more women than men, most of whom are a better fit for the role of feasting shield-maiden than serving-slave. So the gods of bat-work, recognising this problem, have found a solution. Unscrupulous developers who have destroyed bat roosts without a license will serve the feasts. After all, until recently the fines for this were so small that they must surely be due further punishment in the afterlife? To add to their punishment they might be shaved, oiled and forced to wear the sort of leather gear that Holywood thinks Roman slaves wore, but that decision is probably best left to the shield-maidens.

So, once we've partaken of the food and drink that the bat-gods know we love (after all, we eat and drink so much of it?) what entertainment will await us in this chiropteran feasting-hall? Viking warriors would spend their days at Valhalla re-fighting their favourite battles. For us it will clearly be re-runs of our favourite surveys - you know, the ones where it definitely was a Barbastelle, and you got a clear view of it foraging. Or will it? The gods of bat-work cannot resist a little mischief and think perhaps we would prefer to spend long hours analysing thousands upon thousands of bat calls, whilst desperately short of sleep. After all, this is how we spend our lives, isn't it?

At least spending the rest of our days in this batty Valhalla will give us the chance to meet and feast with some of the lesser-known bat-gods.

• You may encounter the bat-god of creaking timber, who amuses himself by making old beams creak and groan, just as you put your weight on them. You know they're sound, but that little bat-god voice in the back of your head suggests otherwise.
• You'll meet the bat-god of thermos-hammering, who can take the stoutest of coffee flasks and shatter them. He's also branched out into making unbreakable flasks utterly useless for keeping your coffee warm.
• The bat-god of bugs might introduce himself and, with great amusement, tell you that all those caddisflies you swallowed during a survey last year were his pets, as was the Elephant Hawk-moth that head-butted you.
• A sudden squeaky-squawky kind of undescribable sound behind you will herald the bat-god of unidentifiable ultrasound (also known as "Middleton's Nemesis").
• Meanwhile, the bat-god of SD cards will amuse himself in the background, playing air-hockey with a pile of SD cards. But at least, from the Valhalla of the bat-gods, you'll be able to see them being snuck back into your former colleagues' equipment. And, as you watch the cards fail on a survey and see the anguish that causes, maybe you'll experience just a little of how much fun it is to be a bat-god.

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Ignore the gods of bat-work at your peril.

 

It's been a while since I wrote a blog post, but I am increasingly worried that many-up-and coming ecologists are unaware of a vitally important aspect of professional bat-work, which I need to correct.

I’ve never been particularly superstitious, but when I realise that the bat survey season is beginning to loom I tend to reach for the cuddly toy bat which sits beside my desk, and give it’s belly a little rub. I’m a firm believer that bat surveys are governed by a set of especially capricious little bat-gods, with many gremlin-esque tendencies, always on the look-out for reasons to trip us up.

Never underestimate the importance of this aspect of pre-survey preparation

 Nobody really knows how many bat-gods there are, or what they are called, but they appear to have divided the work of a bat-worker up between them, so whatever the circumstances, never doubt that there is at least one bat-god keeping an eye on you and waiting to screw up your survey.

The first thing to know about the bat-gods is that they hate being taken for granted. “This should be a good site for bats” will always be taken by them as a challenge and at best you will spend two hours watching a lonely moth slowly fluttering around. But if you were especially enthusiastic, they may get sufficiently irate to cause a group of neds to turn up on your survey site. The best way to avoid this is to start every survey by saying, very clearly “I DON’T THINK THERE ARE LIKELY TO BE ANY BATS HERE.” The bat-gods, appeased, will then go looking for some other lonely bat-worker to bother. Unless, that is, you commit some other sin that offends them.

Another thing which which will bring the ire of the bat-gods down upon you is the appeasing of clients. If the client should show up during your survey, asking how it’s going (often a distracting event in itself), you will be tempted to tell them something positive, perhaps indicating that the survey is going well. Resist that temptation at all costs! The bat-gods, hearing you, will immediately plot some mischievous vengeance on you for failing to recognise their all-powerful position. In such a situation they will gather together in a little huddle and negotiate amongst themselves as to which bat-god will have the enjoyment of making their displeasure plain to you.

 The better-known bat-gods include:

·        The wee fat sleepy bat-god, who is in charge of making it bloody hard to get up for a dawn survey.

·        The mischievous bat-god of barked shins, who skips around the survey site, merrily scattering trip-hazards.

·        The devious bat-god who specialises in making curtains move in unoccupied buildings and making shadows resemble creepy figures.

·        The bat-god of annoying neighbours, who uses a crow-bar and a cattle-prod to extract nosey old buggers from their comfy arm-chairs and out to interfere with your survey.

·        The bat-god of batteries uses a long straw to suck power out of your detector battery, which is why your freshly-charged battery still doesn’t last to the end of the survey

·        The bat-god of padlocks plays with the minds of site owners and managers, to ensure they forget to arrange access for you.

·        The bat-god of weather has more ways of messing with you than you can imagine, but he’s especially fond of hail in July.

·        The bat-god of lost kit delights in hiding thermometers, notebooks etc. so they are left behind at the end of the survey.

·        The bat-god of urban surveys is a particularly nasty little god-let, who has at his beck and call hordes of snotty-nosed horrors specially trained to demand to know what you’re doing and why.

·        I’m happy to say I haven’t had to deal with the bat-god of car batteries for a while, but this is because I always remember to say at the end of a successful survey “I hope my car starts!”

·        As for the bat-god of car keys, the less said about him the better!

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